


A Lovers' Farewell IV: Love and Light

by 852_Prospect_Archivist



Series: A Lover's Farewell by Blue Champagne [4]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: M/M, Other: See Story Notes, Series: A Lovers Farewell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 01:11:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/792305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/852_Prospect_Archivist/pseuds/852_Prospect_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim sees a shrink, eats ice cream, and has a nice dream.<br/>This story is a sequel to A Lovers' Farewell III: Love Remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lovers' Farewell IV: Love and Light

**Author's Note:**

> No BDSM or any degree or form of noncon; even light on the angst, for this series. But there is a warning beneath the spoiler space at the end of the last part. Click the last part and scroll to it if you haven't read the other stories and don't mind being spoiled.

## A Lovers' Farewell IV: Love and Light

by Blue Champagne

Author's webpage: <http://members.aa.net/~bluecham/>

Author's disclaimer: I don't own anybody or anything in this story--wait, I lie, I own Dana. But Paramount and Pet Fly own all else.

* * *

A LOVERS' FAREWELL IV: LOVE AND LIGHT 

"Detective Ellison. I'm glad you could come." 

"No problem; call me Jim." The lighting in the room was adequate but subdued, coming from shaded soft-whites in the table lamps. 

"And I'm Dana. Have a seat, gentlemen." Dana casually dropped a notepad and pen onto the cushion of the overstuffed chair that faced the end of a heavy hardwood coffee table, which stood in front of a leather couch. She moved to the other end of the room, where a small cabinet sideboard, cherrywood with a dark blue cloth protecting the top, supported a coffee maker. Stephen at once plopped down on the end of the couch near Dana's chair; there was a chair facing Dana's at the other end of the coffee table, and Jim dithered a brief moment before taking it rather than sitting on the couch with Stephen. 

"Stephen, you want your usual?" Dana asked, fooling with the coffee maker. 

"Please," Stephen sighed, relaxing in the deep cushioning of the couch. 'Well,' Jim thought, 'he sure seems comfy enough. Maybe this won't be as bad as I thought.' 

Dana came back with a heavy glazed ceramic mug full of something that steamed. Jim sniffed. Gourmet coffee. Stephen sipped and sighed in contentment as Dana said "Anything for you, Jim? Stephen's is unleaded, but I've got regular as well." Right at that moment, Jim noticed Stephen was right; Dana _did_ look just a little bit like Scully. Something about the expression. It gave one the feeling that a dry look and a single raised eyebrow would be the most extreme reaction one could expect from her to any occurrence up to the level of bodily dismemberment. She didn't come across as cold, however. Simply...rational. 

"Um, no, thanks. I'm fine," he remembered to say as she continued to stand there. "Maybe I should warn you right now, I'm not too comfortable, here. I never have been very good at the whole psychology trip, though I've been through it in the army. Officers in certain positions have to undergo regular evaluations." 

She picked up her pad and sat down; one of the softly-glowing table lamps limned her hands and the pad gently as she did so. "That's not unusual. Many people find therapists intimidating at first." 

Jim's brow lowered. 

Stephen noticed. "Dana, he gets freaked whenever anyone suggests he's afraid of something." 

"I do not, Stephen." 'Fuck, yes I do,' he sighed to himself. 'Sandburg's diss chapter strikes again.' 

"It's perfectly normal, for several reasons. Some people think that every word, movement, or tone of voice is being analyzed in detail without the individual in question having any knowledge of the conclusions the therapist is forming, and hell, who likes that? Also, a lot of people see coming to a therapist as a failure--as an admission that you can't handle your own life. Am I anywhere near the mark?" 

"Um, are we really here to talk about me? I thought I was here for Stephen." 

"You are, in part. But maybe Stephen hasn't mentioned yet that our last session was spent talking about your sexual relationship with him, and I think that you'll agree that merits some attention to your own situation." 

Jim blanched. Stephen smirked, rolling his eyes once. 

Dana was continuing. "Stephen's difficulty is actually a less complex one than what he perceives yours to be. As near as I can tell, he has little to no feeling of remorse or regret about the situation in and of itself--his trouble lies more in the pain he underwent as a result of losing the relationship after having invested most of the keys to his self-validation in it, and the grief and anger that came with that loss." 

"Um...huh?" 

"I put all my eggs in one basket," Stephen said, "and that basket was you. So then the army steals my basket and busts all my eggs. Gave me a complex. Actually, it was more like the basket grew legs and took off. Hey, that's a pretty good analogy. I was looking for you bugging out on me about as much as you'd expect to see a basket of eggs running around under its own power." 

"Er...Stephen, I thought we were going to bring our, um, thing up at _this_ session. With me _here_ and everything, remember?" 

"Jim, believe me, it just kind of fell out. I was too embarrassed to tell you." 

"Don't blame him, Jim," Dana added. "Everything I said to him last session, he found _some_ way to relate it to you. Every other word out of his mouth was 'Jim'. When I asked if anything was going on with you in particular, he said 'No, everything's fine.' Then he...er..." 

"You know the expression 'to burst into tears'?" Stephen said. "I always thought that was a melodramatic literary term. People kind of _melt_ into tears, they don't 'burst', for God's sake. Sounds like their face explodes off or something. Well, let me tell you, that's exactly what it feels like. I was _not_ looking for it. I was fine one heartbeat, I was howling the next. It literally burst out." 

"Stephen..." Jim shook his head, puzzled. "Why did you cry? I thought...we..." 

"Stephen's crying that day was a result of a sort of pan-emotional buildup," Dana explained. "It wasn't only upset that inspired it; it was partially what they call 'good stress', which means wear and tear on the emotional front as a result of out-of-control and poorly understood emotions of the sort that we ordinarily think of as 'good' rather than the ones we think of as unpleasant; it can mean other things as well." 

"So, he...he cried because he was happy about us?" 

"I cried because I'm freaking out in general. You don't have exclusive rights to the practice of stuffing feelings in a box and then spontaneously combusting when the pressure inside the box redlines--or your brother shows up with a crowbar and pries it open--and they all come blasting back out." Stephen took a sip from his cup. "And by the way, I don't suddenly have leprosy or anything. Why are you sitting over there?" 

Dana said quietly, "He knew what we would be discussing today, and he's keeping some personal space in case he needs the metaphorical distance." 

"He's stiff as a board because he's got the Ellison family poker up his butt, that's his problem," Stephen begged to differ. 

"Stephen. I'm still bigger than you." 

"What are you gonna do, hold me down and spit in my mouth?" 

"Gentlemen," Dana sighed, containing her amusement. 

"Oh, who's a sick fuck _now_ ," Jim pointed out. 

"You started it." 

"I did not--mister 'Jim's got a poker up his butt'." 

"You started it when you sat all the way across the room, looking like a nervous virgin on her wedding night. Who suspects she may be a lesbian." 

" _Gentlemen_ ," Dana tried again. 

"Fine, you want me to move, I'll move. Here." Jim got up and plunked down right next to Stephen in such a manner that you couldn't have forced a Melrose Place plotline between them. 

"Get off." Stephen put his mug down on the end table and shoved halfheartedly at Jim. 

"Make me." 

Dana sighed again, crossed her legs and leaned back in her chair with a half-smile. 

"Oh, right, _now_ you're all over me, as long as you can be aggressive about it. Apparently that terminal case of cooties I had all the way over here has cleared up?" 

"Is _that_ what crawled up your ass and died all of a sudden? I hate to break it to you, Stevie, but I can't drive and cuddle at the same time." 

"For one thing, it was your whole attitude; you might as well have had barbed wire and guard dogs around you, and I might as well have been invisible and inaudible. For another, you forget that I happen to know that you _can_ drive and cuddle at the same time." 

Jim's glare slowly metamorphosed into a startled look. Then he started to turn pink and looked away, obviously embarrassed. "Um...sorry, Stevie. It's, the, uh. Telling someone else. We've _never_ told anyone but Blair, and I already trust him with...things that could ruin me just as fast as someone finding out I was in love with you. I was...fuck. Scared. Blair says I always shut down when I'm scared...not dodging bullets or something, that's just kind of oh-shit-heads-up, you don't have time to...say, imagine one of those bullets hitting you in the back, and being paralyzed for the rest of your life, and have visions of yourself in the extended care facility and all that, it's over before it can get that far. This...is different." 

"I know, Jim." Stephen put an arm over Jim's shoulders. "It was just kind of a slap in the face. You've been...really touchy, touched _me_ more than before over the last year, I mean, during the past couple of weeks...but now that we're going to discuss having been lovers with someone else, suddenly I'm made of plutonium and you'll hardly look at me, much less touch me. Maybe it's not intentional, but it walks and quacks an awful lot like you're ashamed of me. Of what we had, I mean. Or worse, like I somehow...like I disgust you, at least part of the time." 

"You know that isn't true." 

"My mammal brain does. But somewhere a few layers down is a reptile brain screaming in anguish. Okay, okay...I know you don't mean it like that, Jim." 

Jim nodded. "Um...is it going to...be a problem every time I have to close off? Is it going to..." 

"...crawl up my ass and die?" Stephen smiled a little. "Maybe. I don't know. Jim, you're just going to have to forgive me for being insecure for a while." 

Jim frowned. "Insecure?" 

"We may not exactly have each other back yet, like we talked about...but at least now I know you're out there. I can feel you, trying to get to me. But you left me before--twice--without warning, and once in THE most hurtful way humanly possible. Backpedaling away from me because we're going to bring our thing out in the open to discuss with my shrink does not speak well for the likelihood of your sticking around when things start to get uncomfortable, or embarrassing, or...just difficult." 

"You're afraid I'll leave you _again_?" 

"In a word, yes. Jim, it's not a rational fear, and I don't think you're lying to me. But I didn't think you were lying to me _then_ , either, so that's not a lot of reassurance to the part of me where that time capsule lives. Besides, maybe you're not lying, exactly, not right now--but you'll...decide you made a mistake, and...give up." 

"Are you saying you're going to need constant reassurance?" 

"Hell, Jim, I'm not asking you to blow me on a street corner, for Christ's sake. Just the occasional indication that you actually kind of like me okay, and aren't ashamed for other people to see you acting like it, that's all I mean. Just be with me like you are when we're alone. I mean this question seriously, Jim, so think about it before you answer: Is that asking too much? If it is, I need to know, so I won't pull the panic switch." 

"I don't need to think about it, Stephen, of course it isn't asking too much. I didn't think about the way it would seem to you. I just assumed you'd feel the same as I do about it--want some space of your own, to make it a little easier to talk about something so close, and so...loaded, I guess is the word. I didn't think, that's all. But try and give _me_ a break, too? Don't pull the panic switch without saying something to me first, okay?" 

Stephen let out a blustery sigh, nodding. "Okay." 

"Really, I'm not leaving, Stevie. In case you forgot, I'm the one who came to _you_ about this." 

"Yes, when your ability to work started to look like it might become compromised." 

"Shit. I can't win for losing, here." 

"You say you're scared? Well, I'm scared too, Jim. It's just hard for me to tell whether we're scared of the same things sometimes." 

"You're really not worried at all about telling Dana everything about us? By the way, I'd kind of like to know what you've already told her before I go opening my mouth." 

"I'm _sorry_ , I told you, I just lost it. And she's my _shrink_ , I tell her everything. But that, I mean. And you and I had already agreed you'd come with me for a while and we'd work with her about it all. It's not like I told her before we'd agreed to that. And no, telling Dana about it doesn't worry me. But look at it this way; you told Blair without telling _me_ you were going to." 

"...I couldn't face talking about it with _you_ yet. But he's my...well, you know the many and varied things he is to me. With him I could tackle thinking about it." 

"I know. I haven't kicked your ass for telling him, have I?" 

Jim shook his head. 

They were quiet for a moment. 

Dana looked up from her notepad, where she was crossing a T. "You may find this difficult to believe, but you two are actually quite good at this." 

Jim blinked. "At fighting?" 

"I know it felt like fighting to you, Jim, but you were actually working together. It's not surprising; from what Stephen's told me, that was how the two of you survived your childhood and adolescence--through a system of negotiation with, and support of, each other. You each had a vested interest in the happiness and comfort of the other because your own happiness and comfort, in part, depended on it." 

Jim gave a slow smile. "And here I thought I wanted him to be happy because I loved him." 

"Well, sure," she conceded with a tip of her head. "That's partly what I mean. When you love someone, their pain becomes intolerable to you. But what I was referring to was the fact that you already have a thorough grounding in the dynamic I mentioned. All you need to do is learn to apply it to the defining and resolving of your _current_ relationship, instead of the simple survival and mutual strengthening that was your goal back then, and it looks like that's beginning to happen already." 

"Yeah, well, here's to it happening as fast as possible," Stephen said, picking his mug back up and briefly toasting the idea before taking a sip. 

Jim, who was still sitting right up against Stephen, shifted uncomfortably--not so much because of the contact, but because it was a damned awkward position to try to have a three-way conversation in, owing to the angle, and Stephen in the way of Jim and Dana being able to talk without craning around him. However, after what Stephen had just told him, getting up and going back to his chair didn't seem to be the way to go, either. In fact, any deliberate move away seemed like a dig at Stephen. 

Stephen, who had moved his arm from Jim's shoulders to steady the heavy mug with that hand, managed to reroute his current sip of beverage before it went down his airway when he felt Jim shifting, turning a little toward him, and nudging him around slightly. When they settled, Jim was facing Dana, right arm lying along the back of the couch, with Stephen sitting in the inside curve of Jim's body in a lightweight, casual snuggle. "This better than the chair?" Jim asked. And he kissed Stephen's cheek gently. 

Stephen blinked hard a couple of times, setting the mug back down as Dana pushed the box of tissues on the endtable a little closer to him. "Shit, Jim, warn a guy, will you?" His head ducked as he swiped at his eyes in feigned irritation. 

"Okay now?" Dana asked gently, as Stephen made a two-pointer into the wastebasket next to the desk with the wadded-up Kleenex. 

"Yeah, sure," he replied, smiling. "Let's go." 

"All right...Jim, Stephen and I have already been over a few of the basic facts and situations of your early relationship, and I'd like to go over that material with you and get your take on it, and work with it for a while before we start any discussion of your current relationship with Stephen. Will that be all right?" 

"Sure. I did say I wanted to know what you guys have talked about already." 

Dana flipped pages in her notebook. "Then let's start with what you remember of hatching the plan of the 'game' as Stephen calls it..." 

* * *

Blair looked up from tappity-tapping on his computer as the loft door opened. "Hey, Ellisons," he said, smiling and reaching up to pull his glasses off. "How goes the first installment of shrinkage?" 

"I hate this man," Stephen said, shoving past Jim to plop down on the sofa. "I've hated him ever since I was born and I hate him more with each breath I draw." 

"Yeah, Steve, hey, I hate him too," Blair said, amused. "He's an asshole." 

"Completely. Complete asshole." 

"No redeeming qualities whatsoever." 

"None." 

"Do we still have that carton of rocky road or did you eat it all?" Jim wondered, pawing through the freezer. 

"Plus he's a pig." 

"Total pig," Blair agreed, his grin huge, starting to snicker. "Rolls in the mud. Eats raw truffles." 

"Boars eat truffles," Jim corrected mildly, pulling the ice cream out from behind a stack of frozen veggie burgers. "Pigs eat, I dunno, I think corn or something." 

"Jim, have you been picking on your brother?" 

Stephen cut in with "Don't let him fool you. He's in a snit too. Turns out we have some very different recollections of the same events. _Very_ \--" he aimed that directly at the oblivious Jim, "--different. Dana needed a whip and a chair before the session was over, metaphorically at least." 

"You guys could have expected that," Blair pointed out. 

"Oh, we did. But what I didn't expect..." Stephen slumped on the couch, brooding. 

"He just found out today that I was the one who spread the rumor, when he was in the ninth grade, that he was in love with Shirley Eggelston." Jim began to eat ice cream directly out of the carton, using a serving spoon. 

"Shirley Eggelston stretches the whole concept of what exactly a human being is, zoologically speaking," Stephen grumped. "At least, she did in the ninth grade." 

"Jim, what the hell are you doing?" Blair wondered as Jim continued to chow down, standing next to the still-open freezer. 

Stephen glanced around. "You've never seen him do that?" 

"Never. And if I did it, he'd take my head off." 

"He used to do it when he got home from a rough practice. It used to drive Sally nuts. At the moment, I'd say it's a sudden regression due to stress," Stephen hypothesized. 

"Yeah, I freaking guess _so_ ," Blair said with a low whistle as Jim ignored them both, intent on the Ben and Jerry's. "Jim, at least shut the freezer door?" 

"Mmmph," Jim said, and bumped the door shut with his shoulder. 

"I guess I'm gonna have to get the story from you, Steve," Blair said, turning back to the younger Ellison. "How'd it go? Other than the fact that you now totally hate Jim's ass, I mean." 

"Well, Dana says she thinks we're really ready to do this, whatever 'this' turns out to be, exactly, because of a pissy argument we got into before the session even technically started. She says we have an automatic instinct to listen to each other, and to need the other one to feel okay, and since those are sort of primary in working out situations like this..." 

"That's great!" Blair got up and came over to Stephen, sitting next to him on the couch, one leg tucked up to face him. "I gotta tell you, I was worried. Jim and talk therapy is not a good combination." 

"Tell me about it. Jim, you are gonna puke SO hard if you keep that up," Stephen warned. "You're not sixteen any more." 

"Mmph." 

"It's kind of awe-inspiring, in a way," Blair said. "He's nearly finished it inside a couple of minutes. Did he ever do it with anything besides ice cream?" 

"Needless to say we had kind of a hard time keeping it around during summer practice, so he'd go for almost anything cold enough. He used to come staggering in, sweating like a pig--" 

"Mhigs mlon't shweh," Jim said around the serving spoon. 

Blair blinked. 

Stephen supplied "He said 'pigs don't sweat,' and I don't know if he's right or not and I don't really care. _He_ sure as hell sweats, at any rate. I think he'd have climbed inside the 'fridge if he'd've fit." 

Jim suddenly dropped the spoon and the near-empty carton on the floor, his face contorting, clutching at his head with both hands. 

"Uh, oh--he's got ice cream head," Blair said as he and Stephen both mobilized. "With his senses it could be fatal. Try to pour some warm water into him while I get a heating pad." 

Stephen wrestled Jim to the sink and flipped the hot water on, then grabbed a tumbler from the drying rack and stuck it beneath the stream--still too cool-- "Jimmy, come on, stop clenching your teeth, that'll only make it worse!" 

Blair arrived with one of those instant-hot packs and slapped it over Jim's eyes and nose. "Dial it down, buddy, come on, try to concentrate--" 

"Can you get him to open his mouth? This is all just going down his shirt." 

"Open, Jim, come on," Blair said, wiping away the tears that were trickling from the older Ellison's watering eyes, then patting his cheek. "Come on, man, we gotta warm your teeth up--" 

"Got it. Just hold it in your mouth a minute, Jim...good boy...Blair, you must be a saint to put up with this kind of thing on a regular basis." 

"Frankly, like I said, I haven't ever seen him do _this_ particular thing...there we go...I think it's going away...you all right, Jim-babe?" 

Jim sort of slid out of their grasps, slumping against the sink. "God, that hurt." He stood there rather limply, still holding the hot pack against his face. 

Stephen reached for the back of Jim's neck and rubbed it just as Blair went to do the same thing. "Er, sorry," Stephen said, starting to withdraw his hand, but Blair, grinning, just shook his head. "It hardly matters which of us does it, it'll still calm him down. Has it always done that?" 

"Sometimes he'd have...you know, when he was younger, still had the senses the first time. He'd have fits, kind of--like what you call a spike? I'd noticed that Jim could calm the horses down by rubbing them like that, so I tried it with him. It did seem to help." 

"It still does," Jim conceded, managing to get his eyes open. "Thanks, Stevie." 

"Thank Blair. I wouldn't have thought of the hot pack." 

"Jim, you never told me you had spikes as a kid. Your senses were pretty well behaved when they first surfaced, I thought." 

"They were. But thank God for Stephen, on the occasions when they misbehaved. The first time he soothed me out of a spike he was only four." 

"Wow. I'd call that good instincts," Blair said. 

"Stevie was the sweetest kid you'd ever meet," Jim said offhandedly, reaching past the subject of his comment to shut the faucet off. "Couldn't stand to see anything hurt." 

"And Jim was the best protector a kid like that could have," Stephen added, leaning against the counter and looking shyly at the floor. "You know the kind of treatment truly nice kids usually receive at the hands of the cruel little rat bastards that most of them are." 

"Geez, Stephen, how do you _really_ feel?" Blair wondered. "But I hear you on that. I wasn't any better off, but I didn't have Jim to beat people up on my behalf until I was twenty-seven. You know, it sounds like you might have been something pretty close to Jim's very first guide, which would mean he's had three so far." 

"Three is it," Jim said, finally relaxing and lowering the hot pack. "I won't need another one after you." 

"Still, as often as I wind up in the hospital, it's nice to know you've kind of got a backup," Blair said, smiling and patting Stephen on his way back to the table and his computer. 

"You better change that shirt," Stephen pointed out to Jim. "You look like you drooled on yourself." 

"You know what, Stephen? I hate you, too." 

"Sick fuck." 

"You're sicker." Jim pulled his shirt off, smiling, as he started for the bedroom to change. 

Blair's eyebrows went up at the "sick fuck" exchange. 

Stephen noticed. "It's...kind of a pet name. We may have been in love, but we were still teenage guys. Flowery romantic phrases weren't exactly our forte, and at first, while we were still kind of fumbling around with it, giggling and awkward, you know...we couldn't help occasionally feeling kind of...well..." 

"The word you want is 'dirty'," Stephen," Jim called down, chuckling. 

"So we'd call each other that as a joke and laugh, and then it turned into...it meant something else, anyway. You know he means good dirty, fun dirty. The kind that gives you the shivers and makes you come before you can get your pants off at the thought of the cool shit you're getting away with." 

"Yeah, that's something most teenagers discovering sex, no matter who it's with, experience." Blair agreed, returning to his work with a grin, balancing his wire-rim glasses on his nose again. 

"Including you?" 

"Hell yes. You gonna hang around for dinner?" 

"If you're asking, I am, but I think I owe you guys each one. Jim made me dinner a couple of weeks ago. As you know." 

"Yeah, I bet _that_ was a hell of a night." 

"Jim told you anything about it? He said he had." 

"You know Jim. Rough picture. Hits the really salient points, but not much in the way of detail. Which, if you think about it, is strange for somebody to whom no detail can go undiscovered. I always thought it was kind of a pity that someone who can perceive such precise, beautiful things through all five of his senses should be such a monosyllabic sort. Just think what a writer or poet a sentinel who was more naturally expressive would make. He could kind of take the rest of us with him in his perceptions." 

Stephen shook his head, wiping out the tumbler and putting it back in the drying rack, then bending to pick up the remains of Jim's quote snack unquote. "If you'd grown up in the Ellison household, you wouldn't wonder why he's like that." 

"But then there's you, you're a lot more open than Jim. I always wondered if there'd been some kind of environmental factor, or if it was just your particular inborn natures." 

"I think it might be because I...well, I had Jim. He had a little brother he had to protect. You've gotta be able to control yourself when it's not just you, but somebody else too, depending on you. Dad was always ramming that in his face--he was the _older_ one and he was _responsible_ , at least when Dad couldn't be, which was most of the time. 'I've got to go off to the ass end of nowhere for a week, Jimmy, and I'm _holding you responsible_ for taking care of things around here.' Session before this with Dana, I told her about our thing--speaking of being naturally expressive--'game,' 'thing', sheesh--" they both smirked. "--but she quite reasonably pointed out that Dad's doing that, putting that on Jim when he was so young, was probably the reason Jim's so sure he's responsible for it all, despite the fact that he couldn't peel me off _him_ as often as it was the other way around. A lot of my surface anger got defused when she said that. At least part of me had thought Jim was ignoring my feelings, my input, maybe even just making excuses for what he really wanted to do, but if I take that into consideration...I can understand why he made all those decisions _for_ me instead of _with_ me, about what the best course of action was. He _was_ only eighteen, after all, it's hard to examine your own motives with no more experience at it than that." 

"I've occasionally had to deal with that tendency myself," Blair muttered, with a glance up toward where his 'Blessed Protector' was rummaging in the closet. "From what he's told me, if he felt like he couldn't trust himself to keep things under control and out of sight, then--the way he saw it--there _was_ no control." 

"Well, maybe he didn't exactly _see_ it that way, but that was the way he felt, deep down. Dad's fucked-up delegation of responsibility became less of a factor as we got older, of course, but I've been told that things like that are established while you're still pretty small, and, barring some kind of really serious interference, don't change much thereafter." 

"That's a common theory, yeah. You know, I really envy you him." 

Stephen looked up. "What's _that_ supposed to mean? Last time I checked, you were the one sharing sheets with the guy." 

"I mean as brothers. I know, I know, twenty years of estrangement...but I never had a sibling at all, or any friends or family members I didn't move away from before very long. And before Jim left, you had fifteen years of one of the most beautiful sibling relationships I think two people could possibly have. You even fell in love. That aspect of it all, at least, must have been pretty nice." 

Stephen set the serving spoon in the sink, looking pensive. "I guess I never thought of it that way. All I could think about, concerning how good it was, was in relation to what I _lost_ when he left me. Maybe I should try thinking of it as how lucky I was, especially in a situation like that--no mom, and a clueless, self-involved, overbearing dad--to have had him for fifteen years. To have had _that_ with him for fifteen years." 

"And you can get that back," Blair said softly. "Since you're both willing to try. He told me you said he never really came home to you, and I can see that, I know what you mean. But he still can, and he wants to. So yeah, I envy you." 

"I'm not sure how to put this...hell. Blair, you have been so fucking great. Anybody else--" 

"Not anybody else. Some people." 

"Okay, some people would be _ballistic_ over this. Jim and I have...all those important things, all our early lives together, in common. And like you said, we even fell in love. The reaction I'd expect would be, at _least_ , worry and insecurity; people frequently feel threatened even by their spouse's _friends_ , if the friend has significant things in common with the person in question, or more history. You are the epitome of cool over this whole thing." 

"Maybe if I didn't like you, I'd feel differently, but--other than a workaholic tendency that bugs me mostly because it reminds me of myself--I think you're great. Though you'll notice I haven't exactly thrown you in bed with him or anything." 

Stephen considered him a moment. "And that possibility's never crossed your mind? Would it take that, to give you pause about this?" He held up a hand to ward off Blair's raised-eyebrow expression. "I'm curious, that's all. Not making plans." 

Blair cocked his head, staring thoughtfully at Stephen. "How about this. If it seems like anything along those lines is starting to come up--um, sorry--" he ducked the washcloth Stephen threw at him and grinned, finishing "--tell me then. It might depend on the circumstances, how I'd feel about it. Mostly, of course, what I want is whatever's best for Jim. And I'd like you...to be able to have your brother come back to you like he promised, even if he's about fifteen years late. Maybe I'm so hot for the idea of you guys getting back whatever it is you lost _because_ I never had a brother, rather than in spite of that. Follow me?" 

"Yeah...I guess I do. I told Jim he was a lucky man, snagging you. Now I'm even more sure." 

"Flattery will get you everything. How about I make my special roast chicken? The recipe I used for the dinner where you practically had an orgasm right there at the table?" 

Stephen cracked up at the memory--Jim smirking, Blair looking self-satisfied as a cat, and Simon raising an eyebrow and asking "So, you enjoying that chicken, there, Stephen?" in response to the ecstatic moans coming from Stephen's end of the table. "Don't remind me. I felt like an idiot. That was some damn good chicken, though...but really, that's an elaborate recipe, Blair. I won't put you to that much trouble." 

"No trouble, considering I like it too, and as it happens, we've got all the ingredients in the house. And Jim and I are both home early for the day, for once. Maybe I'll have Jim make his special peanut-butter cake brownies for dessert, assuming he can leave the bathroom for the rest of the evening after his coping strategy catches up with him." 

"Your roast chicken _and_ peanut butter brownies? Would you guys consider adopting me?" Stephen grinned. 

So did Blair. "Hey Jim," he said, "what do you think?" 

Jim called from upstairs "If you're trying to get on Stevie's good side, Blair, save yourself some time over the stove and just suck on his earlobe. Makes him crazy." 

"JIM!" Stephen yelled upward as Blair cracked up. "Asshole," Stephen muttered as a parting comment, unable to keep his face completely straight. "Not fair. Blair already knows what makes _you_ nuts in bed." 

* * *

"I am shrunk _out_ ," Jim muttered to Blair as he handed him a dish, which Blair rinsed and wiped down thoroughly before stacking in the cupboard. Stephen was out on the balcony, having been booted out of the kitchen when he tried to help clean up, before he could throw a monkey wrench into the well-oiled machine that was Jim-and-Blair,-two-grown-men-somehow-managing-to-move-purposefully-around-in-a-rather-confined-space-without-stomping-and/or-elbowing-the-shit-out-of-each-other. Moderately serious injury had resulted in the past when people insisted on helping them with the dishes and their rhythm got thrown off. 

Blair grinned. "Things getting too esoteric for you, big guy?" 

"There's thinking things through, and there's thinking things to _death_ ," Jim insisted emphatically, plooshing the tuffy back into the soapy water to attack the roasting pan. "There's such a thing as _over_ thinking, beating something into so many different shapes and viewpoints that you twist the original thread completely, and wind up with some kind of mutated bastard stepchild Hiroshima baby of whatever the original topic was, all perspective of the situation totally shot to shit." 

"And how does that make you feel?" 

Jim glared at Blair's barely-contained grin of mischief and growled "I went through it for an hour and a half this afternoon and after I get home, you and Stephen refuse to quit." 

"Jim, for one thing, most of what Stephen and I were doing is known as 'making conversation'. I know you're familiar with the phenomenon, I've seen you do it. We talked about the news, and the Jags, and his job, and my job, and the new club opening in North End, and my work with you, far more than we did about how things are going with you two. But he was _willing_ to talk about it with me, which is more than I got out of you. You didn't _have_ to make like the great stone face all evening, unless your stomach was bothering you, and if it was, you should have said so." 

"Like you said, I hit the salient points. And my stomach's fine." 

"What _you_ consider to be the salient points. Jim, I'm not trying to horn in where you'd like a little privacy with your brother. But it's important for me to know--couched in words of one syllable if you like--at least a little bit about what you're thinking and feeling during a time as crucial as this. I can't be supportive if I've got no information. For one thing, I'd really like to know when to leave you the hell alone, but if you don't tell me _what's_ going on _when_ , I'm the one who winds up getting my head snapped off and occasionally even sleeping downstairs, so it's not like I don't have a vested interest." 

"I never ask you to sleep downstairs." 

"You don't have to, my taciturn little sweetmeat. I'd say I could read it in your eyes, but when you're in _that_ mood, usually I have to make do with the back of your big fuzzy head." 

Jim sighed. "Listen, if you want in on the whole deal, you're in luck." 

"How do you mean?" 

"Dana invited you to the next session." 

Blair blinked. "Why didn't you say anything 'til now?" 

"Because I wanted to ask you in private. You'd be coming for _me_ , mostly, like I, supposedly, was only going for Stephen's sake." 

"Well, that's kinda before she knew about the, what did you guys call it--" he snapped his fingers in ostentatious recollection. "Oh, yeah. The 'thing'. Now that it turns out you're Stephen's former lover, and you're with me, now, while you two are exploring the 'thing' along with the rest of your...how about 'deal'? The rest of your deal in order to try and get closer to each other, damn straight she'd want to see me. This isn't going to be very successful if your domestic partner is frothing at the mouth at you day and night, or curled up in a corner sobbing or something. Or packing up and leaving. It's a significant consideration in Steve's case that you have a lover, though you may not like--" 

"My only comfort is that I probably won't have to say a word the whole session." 

Blair put the towel down and bumped Jim away from the scrubbing half of the sink, taking away his tuffy. "I think you should go talk to Steve." 

"More talking." 

"Okay, go _listen_ to Steve and answer him if he asks you anything. There's got to be stuff from today that you guys want to bat around--okay, that _he_ wants to bat around and you want to be sullen and uncommunicative about--considering everything that got dredged up, and your various disagreements about it. You were still ticked at each other when you walked in here. Well, he was actively ticked. You, as he said, had regressed into a coping mechanism you haven't used since you were a teenager. Hey, no significance _there_ , I'm sure." 

Jim sighed. 

"You're not going to start cold-shouldering him again, are you?" 

Jim looked mildly pissed. "I've been over that already with _him_. We bought the tee shirt. Not a problem, okay? He was practically in my lap for most of the session, rampant discrepancies in our recall of a few things or no." 

"You cuddled with him? In front of Dana?" 

"He was hurt by the way I'd shut down. He's scared I'll..." Jim sighed and relaxed, kind of drooping all over. "Scared I'll quit trying to find him. Leave him again. I had to let him know, somehow, that it wasn't going to happen." 

"That was really sweet of you, Jim. I'm impressed." Blair's fond smile grew slightly feral. "And aroused. C'mere." 

Smiling, Jim let himself be drawn in. "I thought I was supposed to talk to Stephen." 

"He'll wait another thirty seconds." 

More like two minutes later, Blair managed to unwind Jim's hands from his hair and turn him toward the balcony. "Damn the torpedoes, Ellison, fire up the sensitivity engines and _engage_." 

"'Sensitivity engines'? You make it sound like he needs me to give him his bottle or something, for chrissakes." 

"Ah. Yes." Blair turned to the fridge and pulled out two bottles of pale ale. "Beer's traditional during deep talks on that balcony." 

"What if he just wants to chat? Or go home?" 

"Then he can have a beer before he does, assuming he can fit it in on top of the chicken and potatoes." Blair patted Jim's butt and turned back to the sink. 

* * *

"Nice view you got, Jim." 

"Yours is just as nice." Jim took a swallow off his ale. 

"What do you think of what Blair had to say about Munez next season? You with him on whether the guy makes or breaks the team?" 

"Think there's a lot of factors there." Another swallow, more contemplation of the sunset. 

"Why are you so pissed Blair and I like each other?" 

"SSSPPPTHHH--" a fine mist of spit-diluted beer floated in the warm waning light before dissipating gently on the breeze. 

"Any of that go up your nose?" 

"Ngyeth..." Jim's eyes were squinched as he held the bridge of his nose in two fingers. "Mmng. I hate that. Okay, what was that? Why am I pissed at you and Blair?" 

"That's not what I said, but maybe it's a better question. I said, why are you pissed we like each other?" 

Jim looked genuinely distressed. "Stephen!? What--I am not pissed that you and Blair get along! What kind of fool would I have to be for _that_? You're the one who keeps telling me how lucky I--" 

"I didn't say 'get along'. I said we _like_ each other. Pretty blatantly. Now I grant you, as far as today goes, at least, you've got a gut trying to deal with more dairy than most cows encounter in a single lifetime, and you and I were playing 'did not--did so' for about an hour, earlier, which could aggravate anybody. I had to stop myself from literally stamping my foot a couple of times during that session." 

Jim smiled and relaxed a little, looking away. "It was the rolled-eye headshake _I_ had to control." 

"Your all-purpose answer to anything I said you didn't like." Stephen smiled too. "The look that said 'Ah, hell. _Kids_.'" 

"Stephen, just because I didn't have a lot to say this afternoon doesn't mean I'm mad at you _or_ Blair, and I'm _certainly_ not mad because you guys like each other. What kind of damnfool question is that?" 

"Well, I think you feel left out." 

"Left out." 

"Same reason you don't like shrinks, kind of. There's a wavelength of human interaction that either you're just not good at, or you really don't like. Blair and I, on the other hand, are good at it and do like it. You shut yourself out of the conversation before you could _be_ shut out by not being able to keep up." 

"Stephen, you're nuts. I work-- _and_ play--in group conversations every day." 

"Not at the wavelength I'm talking about. Lemme see, what's the word I want...intimate, maybe. Blair and I are, in a sense, intimate with each other." 

"I know you don't mean you're giving each other heated glances and loaded asides, so what _do_ you mean?" 

"Well...lemme start again. Dad made both of us feel like we were second best, that if we just tried a little harder we could be what _he_ wanted, perfect. That makes us jump to some harsh conclusions about ourselves under certain circumstances." 

"Like what?" 

"Blair and I have gotten pretty close over the last year...in a way, closer than you and I have gotten, because of what was in the way for us, and because Blair is just good at people, and I have a pretty fair grasp of the frequency he's on, there. Because of Dana, I might add. She saved me from almost literally turning into Dad. But we can get back to that some other time. 

"You see Blair and I connecting in a way that you and I haven't been able to yet. You're intimate with Blair, of course, but pretty much only with him. Blair's and mine is a more casual intimacy. It's a level of matter-of-fact acceptance of the self and the other person, or people, in question, and a real openness about it. Like I said, it's just not something you're...best at, let's put it that way. And before anybody else could judge you about it, you judged yourself, and clammed up, and sulked." 

"I do not _sulk_." 

"Jim, I've never seen anyone who can sulk like you do. We're talking an _aggressive_ sulker, here. The loudest silence I've never heard. Most men raised like we are, especially godawful big and strong ones like you, would usually just use that presence to take over the situation and make sure it ran according to _your_ rules of play, whether it was a conversation or something else. You may recall..." 

"Dad. Yeah." 

"Even though he isn't as big as you. He had that power, in his own way. Anyway, you can't do that. You automatically thought it was _your_ responsibility to keep up with _us_ \--" 

"I didn't think _any_ of this!" 

"I know. You felt it." 

"Oh, for--Jesus." Jim slumped tiredly in his chair. 

"Jim, you're stressed because this is all so hard for you and pissed that it at least _seems_ to be so easy for me and Blair. We don't think any less of you because--" 

"Well what the hell else am I supposed to _think_ with you two constantly ragging on me about it all?! Like it's the easiest fucking thing in the world to just--" Jim broke off, set his beer down, and covered his face with both hands. 

Stephen got up and crouched by Jim's chair. "Jim...?" 

"Sorry. Sorry, Stephen, I just...sorry." Jim literally shoved the few tears from his cheeks and found himself holding his breath, just like little Stevie, to keep from crying. 

Stephen began rubbing Jim's shoulders and the back of his neck with one hand. "I'm sorry too, Jim, I didn't know you were ready to crack...really, I'm sorry." 

Jim was quiet, elbows on knees, eyes closed, head hanging loose, letting Stephen stroke him in a slow rhythm. 

"I only brought it up because I wanted to tell you it's okay," Stephen said softly. "You don't have to be upset when Blair and I kind of hook up like that; we _aren't_ trying to keep you out. I hate to say this...but you're afraid of intimacy--" 

"I know. A distinguished anthropologist of my acquaintance has reams of empirical evidence to support that statement." 

"Hm. Smooth choice of words on my part. I just wish you could relax more sometimes, Jim. Blair and I both love who you _are_." 

"It's all so _fucking_ complicated," Jim murmured. 

"Yeah," Stephen said simply. 

"I think I'm jealous of you with Blair." 

"I think maybe you are a little, yeah." 

"Like some insane paranoid part of me thinks you might...he might...that you both might decide you have more fun with each other than with me." 

"I was just about to ask exactly which direction the jealousy goes. It's both ways, isn't it? Listen. I know you don't _believe_ there's any danger of Blair and I haring off without you or whatever, it's just a scared gut feeling." 

"Don't say 'gut' right now." 

"Sorry. But even so, listen. What you are to Blair is completely irreplaceable, and what you are to me is even more irreplaceable. Think about that, okay?" 

Jim nodded slowly. "Um...Blair said you might want to talk about the session today." 

"Not right now. I think you've been pushed _through_ the wall." 

"That's what I feel like. God. I hate this, Stevie. I just want to _crumble_ , here..." 

"It's your balcony. You can do anything you want on it that doesn't violate city ordinances." 

Jim shook his head shortly. "No. I do, but I don't, if you know what I mean, that's why I said I hate it." 

"Would it help if I left you to Blair? It _is_ getting late--" 

"No--" Jim's hands came up and closed around his brother's solid upper arms. "Stevie...I feel like I should apologize. I feel like that a lot with you, and even after everything we've been over already...I do believe the things you said to me the night I brought the 'thing' up, so I don't know..." 

"Could be a lot of reasons. You loved me, so much, when we were kids, all the time we were growing up. Maybe after the 'responsibility' business Dad drilled into you, you felt like you ought to be able to do more for me. Maybe you wanted to give me everything I should have had, and since you were only another kid, not even three years older than me, naturally you couldn't. Maybe part of it's just left over. Like the ice cream." 

"Don't say 'ice cream.'" 

"Sorry again," Stephen smiled, then leaned in and kissed Jim's cheek. 

Jim suddenly caught the back of Stephen's head in a gentle grip and kissed his mouth. Their lips clung, pressing softly; the touch was gentle, tentative, wholly undemanding. Press, stroke, press...and Jim made a soft sound low in his throat and pulled back, frantically wiping at his eyes again. "Fuck. I _hate_ this tearing-up thing." 

"There's nothing wrong with crying. You've told me that a million times." 

"When we were _kids_." 

"It's still true." 

"I just _personally_ happen to hate it, okay? It stuffs up my head and for God's sake, do you have any idea what a crying fit's worth of snot dripping down the back of the throat tastes like to a sentinel?" 

"Salty?" 

"Um. Yeah, mostly. Okay, skip the snot, but it gives me a headache and that's enough reason for _me_ to avoid it, you do what you want with your own attacks of weepiness." 

"Usually I just bawl. Not at work, of course. If that doesn't help, I go to my weight bench and lift heavy objects until I've got my shit back together." 

"That one works for me, too." 

"That's not hard to see." Jim, in the warm summer evening, was in jeans and a tank undershirt. Stevie caressed his shoulders gently again, with a low whistle. "Telling you this never really seemed right until now, but schist, you lived up to your early promise in a very big way. Dear God, you're a hunk." They both chuckled. 

"You're no slouch," Jim pointed out. "You filled out damn well, too." 

They sat gazing at each other a moment. 

"Jim, when you kissed me just now...I felt something. Well, of course I felt something, but I mean...it seemed...right, in a way." 

"Yeah...like I said, touching you still feels pretty right. I don't know if it means...if it means anything," Jim said, veering off from saying it outright, looking away from his brother. 

"Me neither, but I have a weird feeling," Stephen muttered, looking back through the windows into the lighted loft, where Blair was now at the table, hair tied back and glasses on, tapping on his computer, "that your guy in there may know something we don't." 

"That wouldn't surprise me in the least. He _is_ the shaman around these parts." 

As if on cue, Blair looked up, smiled at Stevie, and winked. 

"Shit." 

Jim had caught the interchange. "Now _that's_ odd. Usually he can only do that with me." 

"Great. I am entirely weirded out now. Jim, I think I _had_ better take off. I'm at maximum relative absorption here, I need to get some sleep." 

"Yeah, I guess...maybe I'd better try to unwind, too. I am _way_ too old for this soul-searching shit..." 

* * *

Jim woke up slowly, barely aware of a very slight, soft swaying...and a sweet, heavy warmth in his arms, the pressure of a wiry-muscled back, a hard young body pressed close all along his own. 

He opened his eyes. Dawn was just breaking across the valley. They were camped on a promontory about halfway up the side of the mountain they'd tromped up the previous day. The broad stream they intended to fish chuckled over rocks to the south, behind a line of saplings and brush, its muted voice sussurating, hypnotic. 

The weather had been so good that, while they'd gone ahead and put the tent up, they still decided to sleep outside it, and erected the hammock to avoid ground crawlies. It was the type without cross supports, so when you got in it you wound up about half-cocooned...and if two people shared it, they'd be friends when they got out even if they hadn't been when they got in. 

"Stevie," Jim murmured into the shining head of hair that nestled just beneath his chin. He lifted his head and shifted a little so he could pull a hand free of the sleeping bag, sweep the soft mass back and gently kiss the ear thus revealed. "Wake up, Stevie." 

"Mmmmnnn..." the noise his brother made was halfway between contentment and irritation. "Don' wanna. Like it right here..." he pulled Jim's arm back around him and snuggled back closer. 

Jim squeezed him happily, smiling again into the soft hair. "Okay, but the sun's coming up over the ridge across the valley. You don't have to move. Just open your eyes and look." 

"Mmmkay." Stevie wriggled against him a bit, turning his head to get his hair out of his face, and gazed a moment. "Wow. Those clouds are just...glowing gold." 

"Mm," Jim agreed. 

After a few moments, Stevie squirmed a little, and Jim realized he wanted to turn over, so he cooperated as much as possible in the narrow sleeping-bag-lined space. The look on his brother's face was unmistakable, as was the kiss Jim found himself receiving, and the morning stiffie that matched his own, pressing comfortably alongside Stevie's between their bodies. 

Jim panted softly "We better get out of the hammock." 

"Why? It seems to be working in our favor." 

"It's not really designed to hold two people as big as we are in the first place, and if we start humping around in here we'll likely break it. Leaving aside the bruises when we hit the ground, what would we tell Dad?" 

"That we tied it to the top of the car back at the trailhead and it came loose and fell down the side of the...mmmm...don't stop, Jimmy, don't you dare stop..." 

"Okay," Jim gave in at once; he didn't feel capable of stopping by this point anyway. "But I don't know if we can...get our thermals off...without...oh Jesus...getting out..." 

"Here." Stevie made short work of the long underwear they'd been sleeping in, stuffing the cloth underneath their hips. "Easier to rinse out the thermals than the sleeping bag...Jjjiiimmm..." The older brother had taken Stevie's satin-skinned, firm-fleshed erection in his hand and was stroking it with careful, attentive slowness. Stevie reached for Jim to answer in kind, and they kissed. And caught their shared rhythm. 

Holding tight to each other with their free arms so as not to break the kiss, they moved faster, moaning against each other's tongues, until they couldn't keep their mouths together for the surging violence of their shared motion, and Jim squeezed Stevie close, whispering "Love you, love you, Stevie...Stevie...oh god I'm gonna...don't stop, so close--" 

"...love you, Jimmy...always...oh God I'm there Jimmy don't _stop_ I'm right _there_ \--" 

With a communal shout that rang in the trees fit to silence the birds for a few brief moments, it was over, and they slumped, sated for the moment, and sticky, and rubbing their mouths gently, so gently, together...lips warm and slick and just a little swollen... 

"I think...maybe we better hit the stream, before we get stuck like this," Stephen eventually whispered against Jim's throat. 

"Nah, let's just be stuck." 

Stephen chuckled as his brother gave him a friendly squeeze. "Okay, but you get to explain to the rescue team that comes up here after us why they need the Jaws of Life to get us out of this." 

They cackled softly together as the sun's light crested the ridge and fell across them directly, warming, soothing, comforting. 

"This is so great, Jim." 

"Yeah." 

"Let's go camping again next weekend if Dad lets us. It's so _cool_ being able to wake up with you." 

"Mm. Even if we do smell a little..." 

"If we can survive the locker room, we can survive a minor case of morning breath or whatever. Come on, I'm starved. Let's get breakfast." 

"Sounds good. I'll take the, uh, casualties here to the stream and get them rinsed." 

"I wouldn't bother with that just yet," Stephen cautioned him, "unless you don't mind having to do it about five more times." And for a moment all they could do was lie there, blue eyes smiling into blue, awash in purest contentment. 

* * *

Blair rolled over...and over...and ov-- 

With a rattling snort he awoke, realizing that his top half was hanging off Jim's side of the bed. "Mmph...hate when this happens..." he struggled upright, rubbing at his face with both hands. "Jim?" 

"I'll be up in a minute," Jim called from the bathroom. Blair floundered back to his pillow and flopped. 

Jim came up the stairs slowly and settled back into the bed, but didn't lie down. 

"Tell me about it," Blair mumbled, eyes still closed. 

"It was so clear. It was a memory." 

"We've been working on sharpening your detail memory, this might be related. What was it about?" 

"Me and Stephen, big surprise. A camping trip we took the summer after we first got..." 

"Got the 'thing' going," Blair surmised. "I bet you guys suddenly found that Camping Was Your Life." 

"Well, yeah, pretty much, though we had to work around the summer practice schedules. We both played basketball when we had the time; otherwise I was football, and he wrestled--which is part of why he could at least hold his own, and sometimes stomped me, when we play-fought. Anyway, we loved being able to stay together all night without worrying, wake up together. We _could_ sneak into each other's rooms at night--we'd been doing that ever since Mom left--but we had to make sure we were back in our own beds before Sally got there to make breakfast. She'd caught us sleeping together when we were little, and never mentioned it to Dad, but it would have been kind of hard to explain after both of us hit puberty. Not that _she_ would have minded, but we couldn't ask her to keep it to herself without making her suspicious that there might be something else going on." 

"Oh really." 

"Well, not sex, no, that wouldn't be the first thing to occur to her, but we were teenagers. Bright, outgoing, dangerously inventive teenagers who might have been up to God knows what. I'm pretty sure she guessed how we'd sneak onto the roof, but she never caught us as far as I know. If she did, she didn't let on." 

"Okay. Go on." 

"I woke up, in the hammock with Stevie, and it felt like I was really waking up. I thought I was _there_. The sun was just coming up. It was beautiful." 

"Sounds nice. You fool around?" 

"Of course we fooled around. If you were anywhere through the ages of fifteen and seventeen and off alone on a camping trip with your girlfriend, what would you spend most of your time doing?" 

"I was with a guy when I was seventeen, and I'd spend most of my time screwing my brains out." 

"That's about the size of it. We did it...shit, somewhere around half a dozen times that day." 

"Oh to be a teenager again." 

"You almost kill me as it is; if you had the stamina and recuperative power you likely did as a teenager I don't think I'd last long." 

"Probably not, old man. So why do you think you woke up?" 

"Um...I grabbed Stevie tight and rolled, and flipped the hammock, and we fell out, still encased in the sleeping bag. I made sure I was on the bottom, of course. When the wind got knocked out of me, I woke up. It felt like one of those waking-up-just-before-you-hit-the-ground falling dreams." 

"Oof." 

"Except not such a shock. So what do you think it means?" 

"That depends. How did you feel when you woke up? Besides out of breath and horny, I mean." 

Jim smiled slowly in the darkness. "Well, startled at first, then...I was remembering what happened just after...Stevie was laughing his ass off and calling me a dickhead, and I was tickling him, he was tickling back...I was smiling before I got all the way awake." 

Blair smiled, too, eyes still closed. "I think the gods are letting you know that they're blessing you and Stephen on your journey of re-discovery. Or else your subconscious is pretty happy about it, one or the other." 

"Why not both?" 

"Sure, why not. Both." 

"But I was so freaked out earlier this evening..." 

"Maybe there's some wish fulfillment going on, too, then." 

" _Wish_ fulfillment?" 

"I just meant you want things to be right with you and Stephen, like they were back then, in that memory. Settle down." 

Muttering softly, Jim lay down. He reached over to Blair pulled on his hand gently, and Blair, snuffing and snorting, got curled up in the curve of Jim's arm, head resting on his chest. Quiet reigned in the loft. 

For about thirty seconds. "Blair?" 

"Yeah?" 

"Do you think I still...want Stephen?" 

Blair sighed a blustery sigh, and said patiently "Well, I think you _love_ Stephen...I think you feel, just as much as he does, that you never came home to him, and you're rifling through everything you can think of related to him in an attempt to get back whatever it is you've lost. Adding your paranoia to that, I think you're--" 

"Adding my paranoia?! It isn't paranoia if they're really after you, Chief. I _did_ have an affair with Stephen." 

"You had an affair with Stevie." 

"Your point being?" 

"Hell, Jim." Blair turned over and propped up on one elbow. "Think about Stephen. The guy who left here--" Blair squinted at the clock. "About five hours ago, not the guy you just woke up in the hammock with." 

"They're the same guy." 

"True, but bear with me. Try this: Think about...some occasion, maybe where you hugged him, after you started getting comfortable with each other again, but before you started getting the panic symptoms. That guy. Think of him." 

"Should I think of the hug, too?" 

"Yeah. Do that." 

"Okay, I'm thinking." 

"Good. Are you getting a hard-on? Either literally or metaphorically?" 

"Oh, for-- _no_ I'm not getting a hard-on, for shit's sake." 

"Something tells me that somewhere in your mind, Stephen and Stevie are not necessarily the same guy, and what you two are looking for is a way to integrate the boys you were with the men you are now. Okay, now I want you to think of the guy you kissed out on the balcony." 

"You saw that, huh?" Jim muttered. "I really don't know where that came from." 

"I think I do, and I'm trying to tell you if you'll _cooperate_ with me." 

"Okay, okay..." Jim sighed. "I'm thinking about the guy on the balcony." 

"You want to touch him, don't you? To look at him, listen to his voice, absorb him with your senses. He's pulling at you, isn't he?" 

"Well...fuck. Yes. Even though while we were out there he was freaking analyzing my supposedly being pissed at you and him." 

"We won't go there right now," Blair said hastily, warding the topic off with his tone of voice. "Now, when you kissed him...think about that. Turning you on?" 

Jim was quiet a moment. 

"It is, isn't it." 

Jim sighed. "I thought I had the super-senses around here." 

"Jim, I think what you and Stephen need--" 

"Is closure, you said that." 

"Right, but listen--and whatever you do don't act on this until you feel more certain of what it means exactly, okay? If you do decide to act on it, that is." 

"Okay, whatever." 

"In my considered opinion, Jimmy and Stevie are still screaming to get back to each other. Now, it's true that if you'd been able to stay together, you probably still wouldn't be lovers today, and I'm not talking about practical considerations--heavy money is on Stephen for the stockholders to make him his company's next CEO, and you're a _cop_ , for pete's sake, but dismiss that for now. Pretend you're a janitor and he's a truck driver, that you can duck the eyes of the world if you want to." 

"Can I be the truck driver?" 

"Jim." 

"Sorry." 

"All I mean is you should keep in mind that it's doubtful, even as unusually deep and complex as your emotional situation was due to your being brothers, that you would have stayed together more than another few years at most, after Stevie was legal, and you were _both_ out from under your Dad and his whole milieu--him, _his_ friends, _his_ coworkers, neighbors, family--and could drop the act, the game." 

Jim nodded and said "Stephen said to me, the night I made him dinner over at his place...that he didn't expect that we'd be lovers when I came back. I mean, he _knew_ that was part of the reason I chose such a definitive method of splitting us up, to give us time to get over each other..." 

"But then..." 

"But then I didn't come back," Jim whispered. "You think...that if I had...that if I'd...done what I said I'd do, we would...we wouldn't--" 

"I can't say that for sure, Jim. But I know you didn't, technically, get _over_ him; you used your situation to put it out of your mind, to bury the feelings and forget about them. You even--whether wisely or not isn't the question right now--forbade communication between the two of you. And Stevie...well, from what you've told me, he didn't even try to get over you, exactly. He accepted, finally, that you two couldn't be together and continue on the courses you wanted for your lives; but he expected to have you _back_ , as a brother and a friend, as open and real with him as the two of you had always been to each other, even more so while you were lovers. But then he got a major shock to his system." 

Jim's eyes flashed over to Blair's face. "Did he tell you?" 

"You told me, Jim," Blair said gently. "You didn't tell me the details, but I didn't need them, because I know you. You told me he tried to connect with you, and you refused to, and he never tried again. As much as he loved you and wanted you back, that can pretty much only mean that you...were very explicit in expressing your determination not to see him again." 

Jim's forehead creased, and his chest stopped the expansion of its current breath. He closed his eyes and turned his head away. "I was." 

"And that shock caused Stephen to lock out and bury _his_ feelings, maybe even more determinedly than you, having hoped all that time, and then being hit so hard by your lack of--" 

Jim choked. Blair at once slid over and pulled the older man close. "It's okay...I'm right here...you don't have to cry unless you want to..." he said that because, perversely, it was the one thing that seemed to consistently allow Jim to let go when he got teared up. 

He did cry, just a little; his body tensed and shook, and Blair felt his shoulder getting wet, but there was no sound. 

In a couple of moments, he rolled away from Blair and snatched a tissue out of the box on the nightstand. "So," he managed after a moment of blowing and wiping, "you think Jimmy and Stevie have unfinished business, and that's what Stephen and I are feeling is wrong--what's keeping us...apart, I guess." 

"That's what I think, Jim, yeah." 

"Well what exactly will _finish_ it? He and I have already said we're not interested in going back, in...regressing back into those two boys. You can't live in your childhood." 

"No, of course not. But don't think of it as turning back the clock, you don't _need_ to do that. Instead, think of the intervening time, since the day you left for boot camp--and even the last year or so that you and Stephen have been seeing each other again, before you brought the 'thing' up to him--as...an interruption. Let those feelings for Stephen come back, Jim--the ones you've locked away so thoroughly...the ones that are giving you so much grief about being ignored that you eventually started having giant guilt attacks and even freaking out at work, once you'd been exposed to Stephen again for a while. Just let the rest of what would have happened...happen." 

Jim just breathed for a few moments. "You're crazy, Blair. How the hell can we know just what would have happened?" 

"I figured you'd say that. But you asked me what the dream meant. That's what I think it means. The sun rising again for Jimmy and Stevie after one hell of a long dark night. Or, if you prefer, the 'light dawning'." 

"I should kick you out of bed for that one." 

"Yeah, try it, big guy. Anyway, you can do whatever you want with that information, like I said. Don't act on it incautiously, but don't ignore it, either. Can you do that?" 

Jim sighed. "I can try." 

"Do you want me to tell Stephen what I've said?" 

"I think...I think Stevie will figure it out himself, if he hasn't already. He kind of exploded in his shrink's office last week; and from something else he said, he knows about the locked-up stuff you're talking about." 

"'Stevie' has known for a long, long time. But Stephen may not be listening to him as closely as he should, and besides, just because he exploded doesn't necessarily mean he's anything but inundated by the emotions, which anybody would be. I know he's better at this stuff than you, and he probably _has_ made more progress, in terms of simply coping and being able to feel at all, but...you're still going to have to make the first move here, Jim. Stephen quite reasonably isn't going to listen to his instincts about this, seeing as how his instincts got him royally screwed last time he consulted them about you." 

"But I'm the one...I started all this, this...trying to mend fences business we're involved in. I agreed to see his fucking _shrink_. Isn't it his turn?" 

Blair shook his head. "No. You're the one who rejected him. You'll have to...petition to get him back." 

"But I don't _want_ him back! Shit, I don't mean that--I mean, not like--I mean I don't want to be his lover any more, and he's pretty much said he doesn't want to be mine." 

"For one thing, think--has he ever actually said 'Jim, I do not want to be your lover any more' or plain words to that effect? For another thing, this wouldn't necessarily involve sex. It might. Then again, it might not." 

"And it might take the rest of our lives and then again it might not, right?" 

"This is going to take the rest of your lives, all right, but not the part you have to do to get each other back. I have a sneaking suspicion that if you both want it, and you both go with it, follow your instincts and pick up where you'd have been if you had come back to Stephen like you promised, you'll both find out pretty quick just what it's going to entail. Then's the time to start making decisions about whether you're going to go through with it or not, whatever it is--and how far you intend to go with it." 

"You're a big believer in obtaining all the necessary data before drawing conclusions, aren't you?" 

"So are you. You're a detective." 

"And you're a scientist," Jim sighed, and held his arm out to Blair. The younger man came back over and curled up against Jim's side again, asking "Are you going to be able to sleep?" 

"Not for a while." 

"You mind if I do, or do you want company?" 

"Go ahead and sleep. All I'm going to do is hash everything over in my head yet again anyway, and I think you've helped as much as you can as far as that goes. At least for now." 

"I love you." 

"I love you, too." Jim squeezed Blair thoroughly, receiving a grunt and a soft chuckle for his efforts, and sighed again. 

* * *

Jim was hanging up just as Blair came out of the bathroom, toweling his head and asking "What'd Simon say?" 

"He says that since my caseload's light enough to distribute around with everyone else without getting him lynched, it's okay for me to take next week off." 

"What excuse did you use?" 

"Hell, like I need one? I never use my time off until he threatens me. In any case, I told him it was a family emergency." 

"Close enough. Have you called Stephen?" 

"No, I had to get Simon's okay first." Jim began to punch numbers into the cordless again as Blair vanished into his room, where most of his stuff still was. It turned out they both thought it was a good idea for Blair to keep his room relatively intact even though he slept upstairs most of the time, considering Jim's light-sleeping habit and the weird hours they both sometimes kept. 

Jim waited, about one step from fidgeting, having to repeatedly dial his hearing down in his anticipation lest his eardrum be busted when Stephen's secretary picked up. "Martin, Blake, Ellison and Associates, Mr. Ellison's office." 

"Hi, Grace, it's Jim. Is Stephen busy?" 

"Hey, Jim. I'll buzz him and find out. Pardon the Muzak." Jim was serenaded by--could it be?--a Muzaked Carpenters tune. It was so watered down he couldn't even tell which one it was. "Talk about gilding the lily," he muttered, "my brain's gonna melt if--" 

"Jim, hi!" 

"Hey Stevie, you very busy?" 

"Not too busy for you, no. If you'd been the damned accounting office again I'd have had the President of the United States in here. What's up?" 

"I was wondering what your workload's like at the moment. I was thinking I'd...like to take a break from it all, you know. Get away and clear my head. After our appointment Friday, of course." 

"Where are you and Blair headed?" 

"Due to his work with me, Blair had to dump a week's worth of classes on two of his fellow fellows, and he will be experiencing payback time all next week, so he's not coming. Can you get away for a while? Doesn't have to be the whole week, but that's how much time I asked Simon for." 

"Um, hold on. Sorry about the Muzak, I'm still trying to get classic rock on the phones and the PA." Jim was again treated to the personification of redundancy in the form of Muzaked Carpenters. He rolled his eyes, finally figuring the song out. "We've Only Just Begun". He groaned. "The gods of Muzak are dicking with my head," he muttered. 

"Jim?" 

"Yeah, Stevie." 

"It's a go. You know in my position I don't have to ask anybody for time off; I just have to make sure things are handled. Nothing they need me for specifically is up right now, so I pleaded a family emergency to Schroeder and Martin." 

Jim chuckled. "That's the line I gave Simon." 

"So where are we off to?" 

"Well," Jim said softly, "If the weather stays good, I was thinking we might do a little camping. Remember that spot by Skykomish Creek we used to like so much...?" 

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In this series, Jim and Stephen had a loving, non-coercive (and vanilla) sexual relationship while in their teens. 


End file.
